RIYADH, 2 September 2007 — Labor Minister Ghazi Al-Gosaibi has been officially asked to provide his response to the Human Rights Commission (HRC), Saudi Arabia’s government-funded rights watchdog, regarding the unlawful act by a local company of deducting large sums from the salaries of foreign workers, the commission said yesterday.
According to the HRC, the local company, which is in the food and maintenance sector in Jizan, allegedly deducted SR400 from the salaries of 183 of its Asian employees. The employees were told the money was going to social insurance which the company was not registered for. In addition, the company was not paying employees’ salaries on time.
In some cases, the HRC said, employees’ salaries were paid three months late. The rights body chose not to name the company. “The official letter was sent to the labor minister a few days ago and we are waiting for his official response in the matter,” a source from HRC told Arab News.
An HRC spokesman, Zuhair Al-Harithi, said that the company’s act was a clear violation of Saudi Labor Laws. He said that in the official letter, the HRC supported its rightful claim to demand an official response from Al-Gosaibi citing Article 94 in the Saudi Labor Law.
The article reads: “If any sum is deducted from the salary of a laborer without his written authorization, or if the employer has failed to pay the laborer his dues on the appropriate date according to the contract without a lawful reason, the laborer or someone who represents him or an official from the Labor Office should appeal to the Committee for Labor Disputes to order the employer to pay the laborer what has been unfairly deducted or pay him his delayed dues.”
Al-Harithi said that in the HRC’s official letter, it was mentioned that according to Al-Gosaibi’s Directive 111 issued on Jan. 27 this year, “Companies, which are proved to have delayed payment to their employees for more than two months, will be banned from recruiting foreign manpower for a year.”
Al-Harithi continued, “The directive also mentions that if the company has failed to pay its worker his salaries for three months in a row, the employee has the right to transfer his sponsorship without abiding by the one-year sponsorship scheme for service transfer and without any obligations. The first employer in such cases must pay all dues to the employee.”
He added that according to Al-Gosaibi’s directive, the sponsorship transfer if chosen by the employee would not oblige him to pay any compensation money to the previous employer and that the employer would not be allowed to replace the employee.
The HRC said that its official letter to the minister was in response to several local newspaper reports which mentioned that the rights of over a hundred laborers had been recently violated by a local company in the Kingdom.
Officials from HRC had said they were working with the Labor Ministry to publish a pamphlet that would be given to laborers entering the Kingdom for the first time that would highlight their rights according to the labor laws in the Kingdom.
Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on foreign labor despite the Saudization scheme — a government program which began 30 years ago to place trained Saudis in place of foreign workers. Foreign workers in the Kingdom work in the fields of maintenance and cleaning, construction, craftsmanship, engineering and medicine etc. Currently over seven million foreigners legally work in the Kingdom which has an estimated population of 23 million.
Among the seven million foreigners, there are over one million maids in Saudi homes. That number also includes drivers employed by Saudi families.
